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Co. F, 9th Infantry, 2nd Division 
A. E. F. 



mM ADVENTURES 2EM 
AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 



By WILLIAM BROWN 
Co. F, 9th Infantry, 2nd Division, A. E. F. 



Compiled and arranged 
from his notes 

By BIRDEENA TUTTLE 




PRESS OF 

SMITH-KINNEY CO. 

TACOMA. WASH. 



3^s 



Copyright 1919 

By WILLIAM BROWN 

TACOMA. WASH, 



JAN 27 1920 

©GI.A559563 



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CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 
IN THE U. S. A -. 1 

CHAPTER n. 

IN FRANCE 7 

CHAPTER ni. 
DUTIES OF A DOUGHBOY 27 

CHAPTER IV. 

BATTLE OF VAUX 43 

CHAPTER V. 

A TRIP TO PARIS 51 

CHAPTER VI. 

BATTLE OF SOISSONS 55 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE ST. MIHIEL OFFENSIVE 60 

CHAPTER VIII. 

HOSPITAL LIFE 69 

CHAPTER IX. 

HOME AGAIN 73 

CHAPTER X. 
RECORD OF 2nd DIVISION 76 



The Adventures of an American 
Doughboy. 

CHAPTER I. 

IN THE U. S. A. 

Writing a book was the least of my inten- 
tions, good or bad, but so many people whom 
I have met since my return from "Over There" 
have been so interested in the late war and 
what the Americans did in it, that I have written 
this book — so that anyone who is interested in 
the adventures of a doughboy, who went 
through all the battles that the Americans were 
in, with the exception of the Argonne-Meuse 
offensive, may re-live them with him. Every- 
thing I have written is authentic. 

And now to the story. Most of my life has 
been spent near Puget Sound, principally in 
Seattle. In March, 117, I heard of some good 
homestead lands in Montana and went there to in- 
vestigate them, hoping to find one that suited 
me. Nothing suited me — I was restless and the 
newspapers only made it worse. The terrible 
atrocities that the Germans committed, their 
frightful cruelty to non-combatants, women 
and children, their ruthless destruction of hos- 
pital ships made my fighting Irish blood boil. 
I thought of war all day and dreamt of it at night 
and felt that America surely must get into it, 
but I couldn't wait so I enlisted at Valier, Mon- 



2 ADVENTURES OF AN 

tana, in Co. D of the 2nd Montana National 
Guard, on March 31st, 1917. Co. D's home was 
at the Armory in Valier, so we stayed there, 
three weeks and drilled, though we had no uni- 
forms. 

Then we were ordered to Helena, to old Fort 
Harrison, and outfitted there. Fort Harrison 
is a relic of old Indian days and the buildings 
are in disreputable condition. General Persh- 
ing was a colonel there at one time. 

I had great fun getting into my uniform, 
and after Fd donned it and laced my leggings — 
some different from these wrapped ones — my 
feet felt so light — it sure was a case of high 
stepping. We had the old round blanket rolls 
over our shoulders, too, instead of the flat back 
packs of to-day and we had a great time when 
we tried to ''port arms" and fall into step 
cadence. It just wouldn't work, the old roll 
was in the way. 

After outfitting, without any further train- 
ing, different companies were sent throughout 
the State to do guard duty, for Montana was 
having a great deal of trouble then with the 
I. W. W.s and pro-Germans. Company D was 
sent to Great Falls, then subdivided into detach- 
ments and sent out to guard the various bridges 
and tunnels in the State. I was sent with a 
detachment of eight which was later increased 
to fourteen, to Belt, a mining town, eighteen miles 
from Great Falls, on tunnel duty. The rail- 
road sidetracked a box-car for us and we 
camped in that and an army tent. 

The second night we were there — (the 
lieutenant in charge of the details happened to 
be at our camp then) — about eleven p. m. we 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 3 

heard a shot fired at the opposite end of the 
tunnel by our guard stationed there. We 
jumped into our clothes, grabbed our flash- 
lights and ran pell-mell through the tunnel. 
The guard had seen two men — just glimpsed 
their heads over the top of the tunnel. The 
lieutenant sent us up the two cuts to the top of 
the tunnel where we formed a skirmish line. 
And this is really funny. He ordered us to 
advance across a wheat field and finally he 
spotted a light not far distant — perhaps a half 
mile, and shouted, "There's a target, boys — 
everybody shoot." Believe me, we all unloaded 
our guns. Then we advanced to the farmhouse, 
skirmished around it — hunted in the woods an 
hour and a half, but couldn't find a trace of 
the man. We all knew the light was in the 
farmhouse — all, except the lieutenant. The next 
day we wanted some milk, so we went to the 
farmhouse after it and found the folks nearly 
scared to death. We really had peppered the 
side of the house — broke the windows and had 
just missed hitting the farmer's wife in the 
head as she lay in bed — the shot had imbedded 
itself in the wall. The people were Germans 
and there were three Germans working for 
them — milking etc., who had come over since 
the war began. Looked queer, didn't it? The 
lieutenant apologized profusely. We skirmish- 
ed over the hill and found a sack containing 
dynamite, about twenty feet from where the 
men were seen the night before. They had 
evidently dropped it when the guard fired to 
arouse us. 



4 ADVENTURES OF AN 

Our lieutenant turned it in at company 
headquarters at Great Falls and the tunnel 
guard was doubled at night — two men at each 
end. 

Later the tunnel was visited by two more 
men and we went up again. But the wheat 
was too high and we couldn't find them. Our 
lieutenant had gone, so the house was spared. 

By the way, our lieutenant was killed in 
France. We hated to lose him, he was such a 
dandy, fine fellow. 

After that — no one was allowed over the top 
of the tunnel without a special railroad pass. 
The Railway Company sent a special govern- 
ment detective out to Belt on the case. He 
worked as a blacksmith while in town. 

We were drilled daily in different army for- 
mations by our sergeant, and we used to use 
gophers for our target practice. The night 
before we left, three men tried to attack the 
tunnel guard. Now, we had built a crow's 
nest half-way up the hill above the tunnel and 
one man was stationed there. When the guard 
saw these three men look over the top of the 
tunnel he called to the man in the crow's nest. 
He started up — but slipped on a board and the 
noise warned the men. When he gained the 
top, his gun proved no good — so he threw it 
down and chased them, but they got away. The 
guard called us with a shot and we scoured the 
woods but could find no trace of them. Some- 
how, we always suspicioned the three Germans 
at the farmhouse. 

The next day, we were relieved by rail- 
road watchmen and went up to Great Falls for 
two days, on our way to Helena. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 5 

We had had such bad luck at Belt — we 
felt we needed a mascot — so we ''swiped" a little 
cinnamon bear cub from a pen back of a saloon, 
got away with him in an auto and took him to 
Helena with us. When all our companies ar- 
rived in Helena they certainly had a collection 
of mascots — cockatoos, deers, bears and even 
wild coyotes. 

We had our training at old Fort Harrison, 
near Helena, and were drafted into the regular 
army August 5th, 1917. We were at Fort 
Harrison for two months. Some of the com- 
panies went out on guard duty again but most 
of us just trained. It was hard work too — sham 
battles and long runs over the hills. Four 
companies of us left for Camp Greene at Charlotte, 
North Carolina, in Sept., 1917. We had a won- 
derful watermelon feed at Atlanta, Georgia, 
and our bear was photographed by the news- 
paper men. Camp Greene wasn't finished when 
we arrived — so we had to go to work making 
parade grounds. Besides the Headquarters 
Company, we had Co.'s D, I and G. They 
spelled ''Dig" and we sure did dig. 

Charlotte was a friendly little town, with 
more churches according to the population than 
any other town in the world. The people flocked 
out in crowds to see our bear and invited us in 
to Sunday dinner, but we always had to go to 
church first. 

While here, I was sent up for a S. C. D. 
(Surgeon's Certificate of Discharge) for a bad 
ankle bone, but was kept for clerical work. 
Late in October I was sent up to my company 
at Camp Mills, N. Y., and wrote out the com- 
pany insurance and allotments. 



6 ADVENTURES OF AN 

The winter there was awful. It snowed and 
rained, our tents were flooded and the parade 
ground was a mud-hole. It was bitter cold most 
of the time and the Alabama troops suffered 
terribly. 

Then the Sunset Division was formed and 
our company was one of its units. Each com- 
pany received a hundred drafted men — all 
Western men — and we had to train them. After 
a few weeks of this we finished outfitting, were 
given new packs, new rifles and new shoes. 
Much to our sorrow our bear was put in the 
Zoo. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 



CHAPTER n. 
IN FRANCE 

At last the glad news came that we were to 
leave for France. So, on December the fifteenth 
we fairly sneaked onto the Leviathan — 11,000 
of us and 500 nurses. She is the largest ship 
afloat, the Vaterland of the Hamburg-American 
Line. When war was declared, her crew dam- 
aged her engines, but our naval engineers soon 
fixed them up and made her ready for use. 

All flashlights and cameras were taken away 
and we sailed the next morning. The portholes 
of the ship were painted over so that no lights 
would show. She had really been transformed 
into a cruiser with big guns mounted on the 
deck and the finest marksmen in the navy on 
duty beside them and our lookouts could see 
eighteen miles. The Leviathan was the only ship 
sent across without a convoy. After we were 
out three days — we ran our course in a zig- 
zag fashion. There was no telling where we 
were going. The great game of "Somewhere" 
was in vogue and we were somewhat relieved 
when six submarine chasers and one aeroplane 
met us off the coast of Ireland. And then, we 
had the only excitement we had on the 
whole trip. 

The aeroplane sighted a submarine and 
signaled to the chasers. Two of them went ahead 



8 ADVENTURES OF AN 

of us and threw up a smoke screen while we went 
ahead at our usual speed. Those chasers were 
little, but, Oh, My! They carried a crew of 
one hundred and ten men and they could spot 
a submarine two miles away and hit it before 
it had time to submerge. 

We anchored at the mouth of the Mersey 
River, England, and lay there all night. Christmas 
Day, we arrived at Liverpool and had Christmas 
dinner on board the ship — a dandy turkey dinner. 

On the 26th, we were transferred directly 
from the ship to the train. We were not allowed 
ashore but what I saw of Liverpool from the 
ship seemed quaint and old fashioned. We 
arrived at Winchester, a very large rest and 
training camp in Southern England, at night — 
and the next day I had my first glimpse of a 
German prisoner. He certainly looked odd to 
me. And too, I saw English girls in uniform 
working in officer's billets. 

On Dec. 28th we were sent down to South- 
ampton and crowded like flies onto a ship for 
'The Great Adventure." The Channel was fear- 
fully rough — and — "all lights out" made it 
worse. We had no idea where we were to land; 
and boys who had enjoyed the ocean trip were 
fearfully seasick. Beleive me, that was some 
night. 

We were glad to see La Havre in the morn- 
ing — glad to march three miles back to an Eng- 
lish rest camp and feel we had at last reached 
our goal. There were quite a few German pris- 
oners here — strange looking fellows — some in 
smiles and some sullen. Their French guards 
looked like Japanese and I noticed the long 
slender bayonets on their guns. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 9 

Fourteen of us were crowded into tents sup- 
posed to be occupied by eight. There was snow 
on the ground, it was very cold and the food 
was "punk" — ^just bread, cheese, tea and jam. 

In the English Y. M. C. A. I met an English 
soldier who asked me in broad Cockney why the 
American troops had come to France. "We 
can't whip Fritz — so, it's a cinch, you can't.'' 
I had my opinion of him — and of our boys — but 
I held my tongue. 

We rested two days — if you could call it 
that, and were ordered off to "Somewhere" — at 
least, we marched down to the freight yards. 
The streets were so narrow and the houses so 
old, that I felt as if I were in some ancient 
city. 

We were loaded into box-cars — little French 
ones that hold "40 hommes or 8 cheveaux" 
(forty men or eight horses). We had fifty 
men in our car. 

I shall never forget that box-car. We found 
some wine casks in the railroad yards and after 
helping ourselves, we filled our canteens. We 
had to pay for that wine, months afterwards, 
(just before our company left.) We certainly 
were happy; we were so sure that we were 
bound straight for the front. 

Oh! that box-car was cold. At last, one of 
us lit upon the happy expedient of building a 
fire on the floor. We did, and nearly smoked 
ourselves out, at least, we smoked ourselves 
beyond recognition, and to add to the excite- 
ment, our car caught fire and the train had to 
stop until we put it out. 



10 ADVENTURES OF AN 

After two days of this sort of hardship — we 
thought it was real hardship too, (we didn't 
know what the months would bring) — our '*40 
men or 8 horses car" arrived at La Courtine 
in the central part of France. Talk about 
being disappointed. La Courtine was a quaint 
old-fashioned town on a hill — a replica of so 
many French villages. About a half-mile out 
of town was a fort with large barracks. One 
of these was full of imprisoned Russian officers. 

Revolutions were the fad in Russia — so true 
to type these Russians started a revolution among 
themselves in the barracks and the French turned 
machine guns on them. The windows were shat- 
tered and the bricks clipped off by the fly- 
ing bullets. When the French finally entered 
the building, they found very few Russians 
unhurt and these few willing gave/ themselves 
up. The dead and wounded strewed the floor 
— our first bit of war. 

We were at La Courtine one unforgetable 
week. Not only on account of the above inci- 
dent, but because our rations were short — only 
canned willy to eat, and we had no tobacco, and 
the French tobacco was so rotten we couldn't 
smoke it. I would have given five dollars for a 
sack of Bull Durham. 

Then we were loaded into box-cars again 
for "Somewhere." Snow covered the ground 
and it was bitter cold. 

Finally we arrived at Langres in the Haute- 
Marne district. There was plenty of snow 
here and it was very cold in the large old brick 
and stone barracks where we were billeted. 
The cement floors were so hard to sleep on, one 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 11 

of the boys said they were sure "terra firma," 
which was the Latin for ''terribly hard." 

Langres was an interesting place. It is, as 
you know, one of the oldest towns in France 
and is surrounded by a wall twelve feet high. 
The old moat is still there, too — tho' it is dry 
now. The streets are so very narrow that the 
people walked in them instead of on the side- 
walks. 

The French people were very polite to us and 
one instinctively felt that they were a pleasure 
loving people, tho' precious little pleasure they 
had had since the war began. And children — why, 
they were everywhere and they stared at us 
as the West Indian natives must have stared at 
Columbus, — but give them a "sou" or a "clack- 
er," as we called the big French half-penny and 
penny and they were suddenly galvanized into 
life — just tickled to death. 

We could buy everything cheap too, until 
the French found out that we were "easy" and 
then the prices jumped skyward. We had great 
fun buying things tho'. One of the boys wanted 
eggs — so he spotted one of these little dairy 
stores, went in and crowed. He got the eggs. 

Langres was a huge training school for offi- 
cers, and they were trained for all branches of the 
arm^^. Here they had a trench and mortar 
school, school of the line and many others. We 
filled all the jobs as orderlies — so that gave us 
plenty of time to visit the cafe. That cafe 
was our center of amusement. It tickled us at 
first — us from Montana. There were plenty 
of tables and chairs all right, but the bar was so 
small. All kinds of wine back of the bar, but 



12 ADVENTURES OF AN 

no beer on tap. That bar surely needed Ameri- 
canizing. All the beer was in bottles — first at 
half franc — later at three-fourths franc, or 
75 centimes. We call our restaurants "cafes" 
— but a cafe is really a drinking place. This 
one, in Langres had a pretty barmaid and we 
used to hold lengthy conversations — she and I 
— with the aid of my "Easy French for the 
Soldier." That book left out all the really im- 
portant words. At any rate, I progressed mar- 
velously in the wines — the red and the white — 
vin rouge and vin blanc (there should have been 
a blue one) though my pronunciation was atro- 
cious. Imagine an American with a Irish 
brogue talking French. 

At ten p. m. the cafe closed — tho' all shades 
were tightly drawn as soon as lights were lit 
for fear of air-raids, and Lord knows, they 
were numerous enough. 

Not far from Langres — on a side hill — a 
fountain gushed forth from the mouth of an 
image of some prehistoric animal, and flowed 
down to two bathing pools, on different levels, 
below. The stone was covered with carved 
names. They told us that these pools belonged 
to Julius Caesar and that his wives (?) were 
fond of bathing here. It certainly looks ancient 
enough — the stone work is so weather-beaten. 
Evidently the upper pool was for bathing and 
the lower one for "sunning" — for it was edged 
with large flat rocks. 

One day while I was there another soldier came 
up who had been imbibing too much "vin rouge." 
Standing very close to the pond — he lectured to 
me on Caesar and his bathing propensities, with 
appropriate gestures, when suddenly he slipped 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 13 

and fell in, thus achieving the honor of being 
first — -perhaps the only American soldier to 
bathe in Caesar's pool — for the soldiers were 
not allowed to use it. 

I took my new friend to a nearby house to 
dry out and the lady of the house fed us eggs 
and potatoes during the process. When it 
came to eating — I tell you that boy was sober. 

Later I made the acquaintance of two pro- 
minent motion-picture men who were both pri- 
vates in Co. A, 29th Engineers, and a piano- 
player from the Orpheum circuit. 

One evening, we four went out together and 
after several glasses of wine (vin blanc) we 
decided to form a quartette and call it the 
"Vin Blanc Quartette." It surely was ''blank." 
We started out a-singing and decided to have a 
cognac ''drive." It must have been a mighty 
drive for I awoke in the morning absolutely 
blank as to what had happened. They told me 
Vd been fightng a French dog. Whatever it was 
he certainly messed up my face. 

We had one dandy song. It was dedicated 
to any young man who was looking for a sweet- 
heart and it went like this: 

"Oh! she promised to meet me when the clock 

struck half past four 
At the stock-yards just four miles out of town. 

She is cock-eyed, she is crazy, 

She is knock-kneed, she is lazy. 
She is cross-eyed and pigeon-toed and lame. 
And her teeth are phony 

From chewing Swiss bologna 
She's freckle-faced consumptive Mary Jane, 

Some Baby." 



14 ADVENTURES OF AN 

We felt that this song was really touching 
— especially cheering to lonesome, lovesick 
soldiers. 

The Y. M. C. A. had a good hut at Langres, 
where we liked to gather and sing and we sang 
good songs, too. Sometimes, we would see a 
sad-looking boy, sitting by himself, thinking of 
home and mother perhaps — but not for very 
long, for some other doughboy would discover 
him and crack jokes with him until the lone- 
someness was forgotten. 

Langres boasted an old cathedral, too, built 
in 1700 A. D. or thereabouts. The tower had 
never been finished, but the interior was really 
wonderful. 

The houses of the town were constructed 
of stone; even the floors were stone, and car- 
petless. The people didn't seem to know what 
carpets were, and the beds were the oddest 
things you ever saw — so high that they used 
a ladder to climb into them — and a feather-bed 
of down for a covering. The pesky thing kept 
slipping off at night. It really should have been 
anchored. All the furniture corresponded with 
the house — antique is the word. 

There was nothing antique about the milk- 
maid; a dear, she was — who drove her dog- 
cart into town every morning, loaded with its 
cans of milk. She walked by it, goodness knows 
how far, but her wooden shoes kept her feet 
dry and clattered merrily along on the cobble- 
stones. 

The wagons of France are very high, two- 
wheeled carts and the horses are always hitched 
in single file, not side by side, as we hitch ours. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 15 

The old hotel bus had a ladder hooked on 
one side of it, which used to puzzle me until 
I saw the driver lean it against the bus one 
day and climb up to bring the baggage down 
from the top. I certainly laughed at that and 
the joke was on me. 

In our company we had an old man whom 
we had nick-named "Powder River," long be- 
fore we left Montana. His favorite saying was, 
"Powder River — a mile wide and an inch deep — 
let 'er buck!" Every time he would say it, an- 
other old fellow in the company used to say "Hook 
'em cow!" "Powder River" and "Hook *em 
Cow" were great pals. They were a pair of 
comical ducks. 

One day I saw "Hook 'em Cow" going down 
the street with a swell-looking French damsel 
and when I asked him how he had captured 
her, he answered, "Jist hooked her like a cow." 
Again, I saw "Powder River" in a black-jack 
game, and later when I asked him how he came 
out, he said, "I bio wed up — but Powder River's 
a mile wide and an inch deep — so let 'er buck. 
I'm just as happy without money as I am with 
it." 

"Scotty" was in our company, too, and he was 
every inch a fighter. But "Scotty" liked the amber 
foam too well and spent most of his time in 
the guard-house, which didn't worry "Scotty" 
in the least. I remember seeing him once — be- 
fore the M. P.'s had gotten him, trying to lead 
two goats that he had picked up on the road 
somewhere, into town. I laughed so hard I had to 
sit down. He would pull and pull those goats 
and when the goats refused to move, he tried 



16 ADVENTURES OF AN 

to push them. Time after time they butted 
him over and Scotty was about to give up when 
the brilliant thought of milking them came 
to him. That proved a failure too, so he gave 
it up and meandered on down to the barracks, 
eluded the guard and finished the day in peace- 
ful sleep. 

I went on down to the Y. M. C. A. hut. 
It happened to be quiet there — the tin-pan 
piano was still and silence reigned. When it 
is quiet a doughboy always thinks of home — so 
I wrote to my mother dear, and sent her this 
little poem which I had written and called 



"My Mother'' 

"Lonely I sit and think of the past, 

And dream of love too sweet to last. 

Around me blooms many a fragrant flower 

The gardens are spread, rich lawn and bower, 

My little ranch home with a porch so wide 

To which I once brought a blushing bride 

And when she came to thrill my soul with bliss 

She faded and vanished by another man's kiss. 

But I have a friend, most lovable of all 

I can almost hear her gentle call. 

Sometimes her gentle spirit is with me, 

Sometimes her smiling face I see. 

Then I laugh and can spurn any other 

As this dear one is my mother. 

Vm getting older — the sun is setting — / am 

chilled 
Mother dear, your place is waiting, never filled.*' 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 17 

As stated before, Langres was an officers' 
training camp and a strenuous one at that. 
This war required officers of both fine brains 
and fine physique. The men were very serious 
about their work and seemed to realize the 
hardships they would have to endure, but many 
of them could not stand the strain physically 
and were placed in non-combatant units. The 
U. S. doughboys were over there to win the 
war, so only the finest received commissions, 
and believe me, every one of them made good. 
We had brainy men behind us from the highest 
official down and thanks to their management, 
the war was won. 

In June, 1918, our Montana company was 
split up. All the privates were transferred into 
the 164th Infantry and the ''non-coms" were 
to be sent "Somewhere." The 164th was to 
stay in Langres for permanent detail work and 
that meant that I would probably be there for 
the duration of the war. Now, I'd enlisted to 
fight so I took a chance, smuggled myself on the 
"non-com's" train and was sure that at last I 
was off for the front. Scotty was with me and 
as the train left in the evening, we got past the 
officers safely. The next day, though they saw 
us, nothing was said and we had a dandy trip, 
sort of an adventure, you know. The train 
stopped at a small village called St. Aingnan 
— then we hiked about twelve miles to another 
village called Montrichard and there we were 
billeted. Much to my disgust, I found that 
Montrichard was to be a training camp for 
casuals, men from the U. S. who had been 
sick and missed training. The "non-coms" had 
been sent there to train them and they sure 



18 ADVENTURES OF AN 

did. It required about three days to outfit 
them, then off to the front they would go, an- 
other bunch would arrive and the same per- 
fonmance would be gone thru again. 

Instead of being sent to the guard-house, 
Scotty and I were given the "highly desirable'* 
(?) position as ^'kitchen police." Talk about 
work! Every bunch of casuals seemed hun- 
grier than the last ones and if eating fitted 
them for the front — they sure were fit. You 
never saw happier bunches. 

Next to our kitchen was a private residence 
and the lady of the house was more than good 
to Scotty and I. When we were not busy she 
would invite us over to her parlor for a glass 
of rare old wine and some music. She had 
a piano and seemed to enjoy the ragtime 
music that I could play. She had never heard 
ragtime before, which probably accounts for it. 
Scotty would sing Scotch songs to my accom- 
paniment and the lady would look at us in 
wonder. She used to invite Co. D*s "non-com'* 
quartette in too. Of course, I always butted into 
all quartette songs with my fine "Vin Blanc*' 
tenor. I thought I could sing, but they told me 
it was rotten. I should worry! I always en- 
joyed myself making a noise anyway. This was 
our favorite song: 

''Drunk last night, drunk the night before, 
Going to get drunk tonight as I never did before, 
For when I'm drunk, I'm as happy as can be 
And I am a member of Company 'D.' 
Glorious, glorious, one keg of beer for the four 

of us 
Glory be to God that there are no more of us. 
For the four of us can drink it all alone. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 19 

We sang this, not because we really were 
drinking men of such caliber, but because it had 
plenty of harmony in it. You understand. 

Another funny thing, when you weren't the 
chief actor, was to watch a doughboy try to 
talk to a pretty French girl. The girl would 
talk in French — the soldier in English — their 
only word in common was "Oui" — the French 
for ''yes" and it sounds like "wee.'' Then they 
would try talking with their hands like a couple 
of Hebrews and eventually they seemed to un- 
derstand each other, tho' it was rich to watch 
them. 

Montrichard is surrounded by vineyards 
and farms and the grass is green the year 
around. "Keepers" who take care of the large 
vineyards controlled by English interests live in 
caves in the hillside where the wine is stored. 
They hold very responsible positions and have 
a great deal of work to do. After the grapes 
are picked and the juice pressed out — it is 
stored in large vats in these caves and left 
there to age. 

The French use wine as we use tea and 
coffee and seldom eat a meal without their glass 
of "Vin Rouge." 

There is an old castle at Montrichard cen- 
turies old, where, it is said. King Richard was 
imprisoned for five years — then escaped through 
a tunnel dug by one of his friends. We used 
it as a guardhouse. 

The old cells were absolutely without any 
light and the old tank was still there, in which 
people were drowned in ancient times, for 
various offenses. The sides of the tank were 



20 ADVENTURES OF AN 

about ten feet high and the water very deep 
— so there was no chance for escape. 

The chapel must have been built before the 
castle was, it looked so much older and more 
weather-beaten. 

One day, I watched the little children of 
the village make their first communion. The 
little girls were dressed in white with long 
white veils while the boys were in black with 
white gloves and straw hats. Before making 
communion, they marched through the village 
streets — the children leading, carrying a large 
banner, followed by the priests in their robes 
and then the relatives — all solemnly singing. 
The people by the roadside crossed themselves 
as the procession passed and I, remembering 
my own first communion in my far away child- 
hood, did likewise. It was very impressive and 
it will always be one of my most precious mem- 
ories of France. 

A few days later a sad auto accident oc- 
curred in which a Y. M. C. A. worker and 
a private were killed. A squad of us was 
ordered to dig a grave for them in the ceme- 
tery. An old man, about ninety years of age, 
met us there to show us where to dig, and we 
learned that he had been the care-taker and 
grave-digger of this cemetery all his life. When 
we had dug one grave about four feet deep, 
we struck something hard and discovered a bone 
of a human being and a little later^ — "Shades of 
Yorick'* — we dug up a skull and before our 
graves were finished, we had dug up two skele- 
tons. The old man told us that when the 
graves were a certain number of years old, 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 21 

they were dug up to make room for more graves. 
Only the vaults are never disturbed — so some of 
the cemeteries of France must be centuries old. 

My ''position" as kitchen police seemed to 
be a never-ending job — ^just one bunch after 
another of tired, hungry casuals. It got on 
my nerves and I began to think that "The 
Front" was a myth — so I decided to ask the 
captain if I could go to the front with the next 
bunch of casuals. 

The captain gave me permission to go, so 
I dropped my "position" as kitchen police im- 
mediately and went into training and I trained 
with a will. We were closer to the Huns now 
than we had been in Montana. 

The Cher River ran close to our training 
grounds and one hour of our training each day 
was devoted to swimming. The boys who did 
not know how to swim were usually thrown in 
by our sturdy swimming instructors and it 
was a case of "sink or swim," but it certainly 
put us in the pink of condition in a very short 
time. 

At last we were notified that we were to 
leave and for fear our destination wouldn't 
suit me, I scouted around and much to my 
disgust found out that the next bunch of casuals 
were to be sent to the Alsace-Lorraine Front. 

Now I knew there was very little fighting 
on that Front and I "thirsted for the fray"; 
so I asked the captain if I might wait and go 
with another bunch of casuals, but he abso- 
lutely refused me his permission to do this. 
So what could I do but just hide until the train 
had gone. I certainly was reprimanded for 
that stunt, but I will always be glad I did it — 



22 ADVENTURES OF AN 

even tho' I had to go back to the kitchen as **kit- 
chen police." More casuals came and trained and 
work went on as usual. 

The Germans, at this time were making an 
advance on Paris and I felt sure that American 
soldiers would be used there, so when orders 
came that I was to leave for the front with the 
next train-load of casuals and I found out that 
our destination was to be somewhere near Paris, 
I was sure I had guessed right. There was one 
happy Yank in camp that nighty for I felt 
now that I was on my way to the "big fight" — 
and I was sorry that Scotty had gone to Alsace- 
Lorraine with the other train-load. 

There were about five hundred of us and our 
departure was kept very secret. We were lined 
up about 2:00 A. M. and escorted to a lonely 
depot three miles distant. At 3:30 we were 
loaded into box-cars and off we went. 

The trip was uneventful, but we boys were 
certainly happy, for we were really going to a 
fighting front. We tapped all the "joy water" 
kegs we could find on our trip as we went thru 
the various villages. Our lives were at stake — 
so we felt that "we should worry!" We'd be 
happy for the little while we had left. 

We passed through some very interesting 
towns and villages. Orleans, a city of 70,000 
is a very large and beautiful town of very 
ancient origin. It lies on the right bank of 
the Loire and is surrounded by a wonderful 
forest. Joan of Arc led the French troops 
when they retook Orleans from the English 
in 1429 — and after that she was called "The 
Maid of Orleans." 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 23 

The next place of interest was Versailles 
where the Peace Treaty has since been signed. 
The palaces here with their wonderful lawns 
and gardens made a lasting impression on me. 
Many famous men have met in Versailles and 
world-famous treaties have been signed there. 

Our car passed along the River Seine and 
thru the outskirts of Paris to the suburb of 
St. Denis and at last we arrived at the very 
old city of Meaux, and here our railroad jour- 
ney ended. Meaux has a cathedral which dates 
back to the 12th century. There was a large 
steel mill there also and I saw a great number 
of wrecked aeroplanes, sent there to be repaired. 

We stayed at Meaux for about three hours, 
then we were loaded in trucks and sent to 
the Front near Chateau Thierry. 

I was sure that I would see action then, and 
say! was I tickled? — Pll say I was! Some happy 
"soldat" as the French say. The fun was about 
to commence, and believe me, — I meant to make a 
few of those Germans pay for the Lusitania. 
My Irish blood was up and you know an Irish- 
man will fight at the drop of a hat. I felt 
if ever I sighted a Hun — goodnight for him. 
I can't describe the pitch of feeling to which 
I was worked up — I was boiling mad. The 
rest of the boys felt the same way I did, and 
we pledged ourselves to do up a few of the 
dirty beasts before we turned our checks in. 

We went on and on over dusty roads — I've 
never seen so much dust. We perspired 
so, our faces were caked with mud, and before 
long we came within the sound of the cannon. 



24 ADVENTURES OF AN 

It was getting dusk with no lights except the 
flashes from the cannon when they were fired, 
flashes that threw a weird gleam into the gath- 
ering darkness. It was as if some giant hand 
were opening roaring furnance doors and shut- 
ting them again with a tremendous bang. 

Our truck passed by a camouflaged gun just 
as it went off and we nearly jumped out of our 
skins — it was so unexpected. French soldiers 
were operating it and they held their hands 
over their ears when they fired it. We passed 
through many small villages where there wasn't 
a sign of a civilian. All were deserted with 
only a few French soldiers on guard. The 
farther toward the front we went, the more 
camouflaged guns we saw. They were usually 
the world-famous 75 's — the gun that wrought 
more havoc with the Hun's army and supplies 
than any other. It is really a marvelous gun. 

We were ordered to unload at a little village 
called Chaumont-en-Vixin, near Vaux, and re- 
port to the headquarters of the 9th Infantry 
Regulars of the 2nd Division (The 2nd Division 
was composed of the 9th and 23rd Infantry and 
the 5th and 6th Marines, besides the usual 
batteries of artillery, machine gun battalions, 
engineers, etc., in all about 28,000 men) to be 
placed in different companies of the 9th In- 
fantry. I was assigned to Co. F and after being 
loaded up with amniunition, was sent down to 
where the company was holding the line about 
a mile and a half from the Paris road. When I 
arrived there with some others, everythng was 
very quiet. But presently I began to feel that 
there would soon be something doing, and be- 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 25 

lieve me, there was! The French bombarded 
the little town of Monneaux and I never had 
heard so much noise in my life before. We 
could scarcely make ourselves heard. The Ger- 
mans had been holdng the town for two hours 
when at 2:00 A. M. orders came for us to take 
the town. My wish had at last come true. The 
barrage kept just ahead of us and away we 
went, but we were too impetuous, in too much 
of a hurry, and some of the boys ran into our 
own barrage and were killed. That taught us 
a much needed lesson and in all of our other 
battles, we worked in fine co-operation with the 
artillery. 

At last we took Monneaux, but to our great 
disappointment not a German was to be seen. 
They had evacuated the town during the bom- 
bardment, evidently in great haste. When the 
civilians left the town during the advance of 
the Germans, they had to leave so quickly that 
everything they owned was left behind — their 
cattle, chickens, rabbits, etc. The artillery killed 
some of them, but after we took the town, they 
made many a feast for our tired, hungry 
doughboys. And sometimes we certainly were 
hungry. There were some very fine homes in 
the town, too, in which we were billeted, and 
say, it was just swell to lie in one of those big 
beds all covered up wth feather-beds of down 
after sleeping out on the cold, hard ground. 

We used the cellars too, to great advantage 
during heavy shell-fire. No use taking chances. 
Our line was established on the outskirts of 
Monneaux within a hundred yards of the Paris 
road. So this road, down which so many men 



26 ADVENTURES OF AN 

and ladies of high degree had gone into Paris, 
was now "No Man's Land." The first thing 
we did was to dig in — and dig in just deep 
enough so as to be somewhat protected from 
shell-fire. In none of our campaigns did we ever 
stop long enough to dig trenches such as the 
French and Germans had done. The holes we 
dug, tho', came in mighty handy, and at times, 
there would have been a great many more casu- 
alties if it had not been for them. 

We were really lucky to be able to estab- 
lish our line here, for we were in a little valley 
about twenty feet wide with a fine stream 
running through it and we used that stream to 
good advantage and thought of it often in the 
days that followed, when we had to lay in 
mud, with no chance of a wash, until we were 
relieved. 

We held this line for thirty-nine days before 
we made an attack and I want to tell a few 
of the experiences we had during those days. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 27 



CHAPTER III. 
DUTIES OF THE DOUGHBOYS 

We were divided into squads and each squad 
had its position in the line. And that position 
was our home. Believe me — it was some home. 
A hole in the ground for a house, the sky for a 
roof, two army blankets for a covering and your 
helmet for a pillow. It wasn't quite as luxuri- 
ous as a mansion, but we really enjoyed it — 
for it was so out of the ordinary. 

Next to us, French poilus occupied about half 
of Hill 204. The Germans still held the other 
half. Next to the French were the 5th and 6th 
Marines, holding the line at Chateau Thierry — 
and they were having a hot time. Hill 204 had 
to be taken before our line could be straighten- 
ed out. We had expected the French to take 
it the day after we took our position on June 
1st, 1918, but the Germans made the attack. 
We had a fine view of the battle. It was a great 
sight. The Germans attacked in mass forma- 
tion and the French machine gunners mowed 
them down by the hundreds so that their at- 
tack was a complete failure. Then the German 
artillery turned loose on our lines and *'wowie" 
— those shells hit close. If we happened to be 
away from our respective holes when a bom- 
bardment began, we dived for the first one 
handy, for any hole was "home sweet home" 
when the shells began to burst near us. It 



28 ADVENTURES OF AN 

really was laughable tho' to watch every dough- 
boy dive at the same instant. We all developed 
some speed. The bombardment would last about 
fifteen or twenty minutes and then quietness 
would reign — and the quietness was wonder- 
ful. Unconsciously we would breathe deep sighs 
of relief and Oh! such a wave of thankfulness 
would surge thru our hearts. 

Perhaps, we would have peace for an hour 
or so, and then "whiz-bang*' and another bom- 
bardment would commence, and so on '*ad infin- 
itum." Those were the kind of pleasure-pills 
Jerry gave us during our thirty-nine days out- 
ing there. He always shelled us, when he 
thought he would catch us unawares, but we 
were wise to his tactics and the way he played 
the game. 

The German sniper was the one we had to 
watch out for — for he was the trickiest soldier 
the German had and an absolutely dead shot. 
When he shot — he shot to kill and rarely missed 
his mark. He used a wonderfully accurate sight 
on his gun called a telescope sight. The trouble 
with the nasty devil was that he was so hard to 
find— for he was usually so well concealed and 
camouflaged. But once we located him, that was 
the end of Herr Sniper, for we sent out a small 
patrol, flanked him on all sides — so as to make 
escape impossible and proceeded to remove him 
from this earthly sphere. A sniper never was 
taken prisoner. 

Once, several of our men were killed by a 
sniper that we couldn't seem to spot. For two 
days we watched continuously, with strong 
glasses before we located him. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 29 

Several days before an old cow, peacefully 
grazing in *'No Man's Land," had been killed 
by a shrapnel shell. At night, the Huns had 
sent a patrol out, hauled the dead cow in and 
substituted a pasteboard cow with a sniper 
inside — prepared for devilment. But he made 
the great mistake of moving around too much 
and accidently moved the ''dead" cow. One 
of our sergeants saw this and ordered a few 
of our men to fire at it. Goodnight, Sniper. 

Another sniper concealed himself near us 
in a tree. He was quite cleverly camouflaged 
for he had painted himself, uniform and gun, 
all green. It was hard to locate him too, «ut 
we made him look "green" when we did. 

The German machine gunners were also very 
clever about concealing themselves and usually 
stuck to their guns until the end. A bunch of us 
ran into some machine gunners one day who had 
been chained to the trees close by their guns 
by their own men. The Huns were cruel both 
to their own men and the enemy. 

One place I remember particularly. It was 
in the Chateau Thierry drive. The Huns had 
painted a large Red Cross on the tower of a 
half-ruined town hall beyond Vaux. We thought 
they were using it for a hospital and our 
artillery never thought of shelling it. Now 
here's what Jerry did: He had a machine gun 
planted up there in the tower and shot down 
a lot of our troops, going thru, before we dis- 
covered where the shells came from. When 
we went to take it, we haH to break thru a heavy 
trap door, padlocked on the outside, mind you. 
Those Dutchmen were locked in by their own 



30 ADVENTURES OF AN 

men — and when we did get in, we paid them 
back for the dead boys in khaki along the road. 
They tried the ''Kamerad'* stuff, but we threw 
them out the window and when they got through 
falling 150 feet, they didn't man any more 
machine guns. 

Off duty, we were a happy bunch — the 
Yankee doughboy usually is. Fear never enter- 
ed our heads and what time we did have to our- 
selves, we spent in the little deserted village of 
Monneaux. We gathered in all the cattle, pigs, 
chickens and rabbits and kept them corraled — 
and fed them, so when we wanted a swell feed, 
we had it. 

I made a rather good start at learning the 
butcher's trade in Monneaux. One day, I was 
rambling around looking at the empty houses 
and ran into a real classy-looking home. Every- 
thing was in its place just as the people had 
left it — so I decided to take possession of it for 
the time being. The kitchen was a dandy one 
and I was hungry — so I decided to have a feed. 
The garden was full of "green stuff" and pota- 
toes and I got a hind leg of a pig that had been 
butchered in our corral. Gee! but that was a 
feed that can never be duplicated. 

I roasted that leg in the oven with the pota- 
toes and fixed up everything else eatable that 
I could find in the garden. 

But you can't enjoy anything alone, so I in- 
vited a couple of French soldiers in off the street 
to dine with me. Now, they knew of a cellar 
in which there was still some rare old cham- 
pagne, so they hurried off to fetch some for our 
banquet. We ate and drank to our heart's con- 
tent and forgot the war and all its miseries. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 31 

Our company liked to come back to Mon- 
neaux in the daytime and pile into the big 
* 'comfy" beds in the deserted houses and sleep. 
We were so busy at night that we had to sleep 
in the daytime. 

Once I was peacefully sleeping in my man- 
sion when without the slightest warning a shell 
burst in the room next to me and nearly covered 
me with plaster. Out I tumbled and made for the 
cellar, where I slumbered deeply during the rest 
of the bombardment. 

This house had a very fine piano in it and 
we boys enjoyed it so — kept it busy every minute 
we were free. Two of the boys found a trom- 
bone and a bass horn and we formed a jazz 
band and called it the ''Doughboys' Jazz." We 
found some stovepipe hats and swallow-tail 
coats too and we'd dress up in those. 

We were a continual surprise to the French 
soldiers in the village. They used to look at 
us as if we were maniacs. We didn't worry 
about that tho' and we did have the time of 
our lives. 

We gave a cabaret show one day — with our 
band and dress suits. It was simply swell and 
we laughed so much we never noticed the bom- 
bardment, tho' the town was under heavy shell- 
fire at the time. We couldn't let a little thing 
like that stop our show. 

We had "Fatima," the fattest person in 
captivity, and the greatest ballet dancer in the 
world, at least in our estimation. He wore 
such wonderful gowns, oh! baby! A petti- 
coat and a corset. When he would ballet — 
you know, dance a skirt dance or so, right when 



32 ADVENTURES OF AN 

it began to get interesting, his foot would slip 
and down he would go with a crash, a la Fatty 
Arbuckle. 

"Cannon Ball Pete" gave a monologue, in 
which he declared he could eat more cannonballs 
than the Kaiser could manufacture. 

Another one of the boys put on a good act 
entitled ''Dirty Eva," the charmng society girl 
from Syracuse, N. Y. and the world at large. 
She could eat mud with as much relish as we 
would fried chicken. "Dirty Eva" was so 
dirty that we used to bathe her with water from 
the Marne, and save the water and use it as a 
cement substitute to wall up our holes in the 
ground. 

"Bayonet Jim," the next on the program 
could swallow a bayonet with ease and pleasure, 
and cut off his right arm without a pain or 
twitch. Whenever I touched him for some cash 
he would say, "You can have anything I have, 
even my right arm." He was a "wonderful" 
man. 

We thought our show was simply immense 
and we were wondering how we could make 
arrangements for a world tour when "Lou" 
came in. Sounds like a female, doesn't it? But 
it was only our lieutenant and he told us we 
were great deal better soldiers than actors, 
so we took his word for it and went back out 
to the lines to prepare for our night's work, 
which was usually made up of trench digging, 
patrol duty and barbed wire stringing. I en- 
joyed stringing the wire entanglements. It was 
really interesting work. 

Our trenches here were only three feet deep 
— so we needed the entanglements, for, in case 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 33 

of an enemy attack, our rifles could do a deadly- 
amount of work before the Huns got through 
the wire. 

The troops stationed back of the front line, 
usually in a small wood, formed details and cut 
stakes for us and brought them and the wire 
down to us, two miles ahead, after it grew dark. 

Then a platoon was detailed from the front 
line trenches to string the wire. Odd, but 
the coils of wire used to make me homesick for 
the ranch. I'd strung so much of it there, for 
such a different purpose. 

Any-way, we left the trenches at ten and 
worked until two in the morning. A machine 
gun and gunners were always sent out ahead 
of us, in case of an attack, so we felt just as 
safe as if we were on our own doorstep and 
even grew so bold that we talked out loud. 
Soldiers have a queer way of getting used to 
most anything, and we are all fatalists after a 
fashion. 

We usually went out about sixty yards in 
front of our first line and if we worked fast 
and it wasn't too muddy, we could string 
seventy-five yards of entanglements in a night. 
The French and German strung their wire 
criss-cross, about the height of the knee, to tangle 
up advancing soldiers, but the Yanks used a 
different system. We drove a middle stake, leav- 
ing about four feet above the ground. The 
tall men of the platoon had to drive these. We 
used a wooden mallet covered with a gunny- 
sack to drown the sound of the blows. Then, on 
each side of the row of tall stakes, we drove 
a row of shorter ones and then we strung the 



34 ADVENTURES OF AN 

wire. Sometimes we had gloves — usually we 
didn't — and we had to be careful or we either got 
tangled in our own wire or got our hands badly 
torn. 

A wire was first strung along the tall stakes. 
No staples were used, the wire was just wound 
around them. Then wires were strung criss- 
cross from these stakes to the short ones on 
either side and lastly, along the two rows of 
short ones. Twisting it around the stakes was 
usually where we tore our hands and swore at 
the Germans. We blamed everything on them, 
you know, from the mud, up to delayed letters 
from our sweethearts. 

Sometimes a lieutenant, sometimes a ser- 
geant, was boss of the platoon. We worked 
until the first streaks of morning light shot 
across the sky. 

Before an attack at dawn our engineers 
crept out and cut the German wire entangle- 
ments. Sometimes the tanks would break them 
down for us, but they couldn't clear the wire 
away and I have often had my leggings cut to 
ribbons. 

We rolled a huge barrel of wine up from 
Minotte, put it out in front of our lines and cam- 
ouflaged it with hay. Then at night before 
we went out to string our allotment of wire, we 
each took a drink for ambition's sake, but when 
we came back, we drank to our heart's content 
and slept the sleep of a good soldier, ready to 
attack at dawn. 

All our trench digging was done at night 
also. In front of our first line another trench 
was always dug to be used for day and night 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 35 

work by observers, machine gunners and snipers. 
When we were thru digging, we always cam- 
ouflaged the thrownout dirt with hay for this 
reason : It is very hard for the aerial observer in 
an aeroplane to distinguish the changes such as 
trenches, shellholes, etc., made in the night. 
So aerial photographs are taken and these are 
very carefully compared and the changes there 
seen noted. Thus we tried to camouflage our 
digging so as to show no change in the German 
air photographers' work. 

When a Hun aeroplane would come over our 
lines, we usually stood very still. That made it 
hard for the aviator to see us. But there was 
one plane that used to come over our lines every 
morning and take photographs. We watched 
him quietly for about five mornings, then we 
got tired of this *'bird" — so we decided to shoot 
at him the next morning if he came. By George, 
he was right there on the dot. When he wa=3 
about two hundred feet above us, we all let go 
at him. We thought he had a charmed life, for 
our shots never fazed him. Next morning, we 
let him have it again, but he sat up there abso- 
lutely unconcerned and took his blamed pictures, 
so we were ordered to bring an anti-aircraft 
gun up and place it on the front line. The next 
morning, when he came back that gun made 
quick work of him. He was brought down in 
our lines and placed on the "croaking sheet." 

The construction of the aeroplane was new to 
us. The body was made of steel, oval-shaped — 
no wonder our rifle bullets just glanced off when 
we hit it. But the bullets from "anti" didn't 
— bad luck to the aviator. It is very difficult 



36 ADVENTURES OF AN 

to hit a mark as the gunners have to judge 
the distance — so the shells are timed to break 
as near as possible to the aeroplane. The air- 
craft shells break into small pieces the same 
as the high explosive shells — but they must 
either hit some vital part of the machine or 
wound the aviator before the aeroplane is brought 
down. 

An observation balloon didn't last very long 
at the front either. They were used principally 
to direct artillery fire on the ammunition and 
food stuffs trains or autos going up to the Ger- 
man lines. The aviators would finish these 
balloons up in a hurry. They would soar up 
in the clouds, dive down over the balloon and 
drop a fire bomb which would set it afire. All 
we would see was a large burst of flame. Then 
the signal man in the balloon would jump out — 
the parachute attached to his back would open 
up and he would land safely in our lines ready 
to go up in another balloon and spy on "Fritzy.'' 

The signal men of the army had very danger- 
ous work to do, and were under shell-fire most of 
the time, laying lines of communication as fast 
as the doughboys advanced, and they had to work 
fast to keep up with us. They laid lines of 
communication to the artillery also, in order to 
direct the barrage fire. Without a barrage in 
front of us, an advance would have been almost 
certain death. Not that we feared death, but 
we didn't want to waste any good men. 

Practically all the "day fighting" was done 
by means of these comjmunication lines run to 
the artillery by the signal men and their hazard- 
ous w^ork kept them on the jump. They slept 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 37 

when and where they could and worked with shells 
flying all the time, and their lines had to be 
strung on something even tho the trees and 
fences were almost obliterated. 

I remember once when a soldier had been 
killed and almost buried by a high explosive 
shell. Only his arm still stuck up out of the 
earth. 

A signal man came by with his wire and not 
finding anything else, wound it around the up- 
right hand and from there to the stump of a 
tree that had been blown to pieces by artillery 
fire. 

Another signal man came by with a touch of 
sentiment in him and took time to scribble some- 
thing on a piece of wood and stick it up beside 
the upright arm. It was "Still doing his bit." 
It showed the spirit of our boys — game to the 
end. 

The signal work at night consisted of send- 
ing up rockets and lighted parachutes. They 
spoke a language all their own that "Fritzy'* 
couldn^t understand. A code wouldn't have 
done him any good for sometimes the rockets 
meant one thing and sometimes another. 

The rockets or flares were used principally to 
locate enemy patrols and to watch for any 
advance the enemy might try to make. The 
lighted parachutes were used to signal the artil- 
lery, in case they were falling short, as was some- 
times the case. 

On July 3rd, at midnight, the whole line 
celebrated for one hour. Say boy, that was 
some celebration, and Jerry must have thought 
his last days had come, but we were only giving 



38 ADVENTURES OF AN 

himi a little exhibition of what was going to 
happen to him. 

If I found wire-stringing interesting, I cer- 
tainly found night patrol work exciting. We 
always went out at ten o'clock at night and 
what was left of us came back at two in the 
morning, just before dawn. 

There were always eight or twelve of us with 
a sergeant in command. We blackened our 
faces like ''nigger" comedians, put gunny sacks 
over our well-worn shiny helmets, crawled thru 
our barbed wire and began our hunt in the dark, 
in "No Man's Land" for a German patrol. We 
carried both rifles and hand grenades. 

Now, there are nearly always forty men in 
a German patrol — about ten with rifles and the 
rest with hand grenades, which we called ''potato 
mashers" from their shapes. These "mashers" 
are dangerous contrivances and being near one 
when it explodes means "lights out" for you — 
so we sure had to keep our eyes open, or 
rather ears open, when we were out on night 
patrol. 

What we wanted principally was prisoners 
for information. So when we met a German 
patrol, in a bunch, we used our grenades; if we 
met them singly, we used our rifles. The men 
in the trenches, of course, knew we were hav- 
ing a skirmish, but they always let us fight 
it out alone. If any of our men were hurt — 
other men were sent out from our trenches to 
bring them in. 

If we brought in any German prisoners, we 
used to scare the life out of them and say! — the 
poor fools would come through with all kinds 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 39 

of information and it was generally the truth. 
Talk about cowards — they were so dead scared 
of being shot that they couldn't get their in- 
formation out fast enough and they all ran true 
to form, with few exceptions. Sometimes, we've 
had them sneak out of their trenches and walk 
straight over to ours, give themselves up. and 
tell everything they knew about their military 
situation. 

Out at night, we had to exercise all the skill 
and strategy that we knew, for sometimes Ger- 
man patrols would pull off some new stunt that 
we weren't wise to. Usually the whole patrol 
worked together, sending one or two men out 
to meet our patrol — if we ran across each other 
— while the others would conceal themselves 
nearby, ready to slice us up. 

Fritz thought we'd be fools enough to go at 
him in a bunch, but we didn't. We'd send one 
or two men out to flank them while the rest 
would get ready to do up the rest of their 
bunch. 

I remember a skirmish one night on the 
Paris road. It ran between our trenches — a 
broad beautiful road, that had been bordered 
by two rows of beautiful trees, now torn and 
shattered and uprooted by shell-fire. 

We bumped into one of "Jerry's" patrols, 
threw our grenades into it and used our rifles 
with telling effect for we could hear the wounded 
Germans a-hollering. 

It got pretty hot for us, too, for they threw 
their beastly "potato mashers." Three of our 
men were wounded and the rest of us scattered 
and hunted for shell-holes until we could find 



40 ADVENTURES OF AN 

our way back to our trenches — crawl back, you 
know, through the mud. When we finally got 
back, another patrol was sent out to look for 
the wounded Huns, but they had been gathered 
up by their own men and carried back to the 
trenches. A few nights later, one of our patrols 
brought us in some prisoners who gave us in- 
formation that helped us later when we at- 
tacked Vaux. 

Another night, our patrol stumbled right on 
to the Hun's trench — and the trenches here were 
only holes three feet deep, just for protection in 
case of shell-fire — and their sentry shouted, 
"Who goes there?" in broken English. Luckily, 
one of our men could speak German fluently — 
so he yelled back that he was one of a German 
patrol that had been out in "No Man's Land," 
and passed the sentry. The rest of us laid low 
in the tall wheat. Pretty soon he came back 
bursting with news. He said it would be "darn- 
ed easy" to take some prisoners — so we crept 
quietly up to the very edge of the trench. We 
listened to "Fritzy" talking for a minute, then 
one of the boys threw a hand grenade in and the 
fun began. They came out like a bunch of 
bees and we had a good five minute scrap — 
came off victors with eight prisoners, including 
the sentry, and called it a night's work. 

Sometimes we would locate a machine gun 
in the daytime that was holding us up, and our 
patrols would creep out at night through the 
barbed wire, flank the machine gun nest, throw 
a grenade into it and — goodnight — "Jerry" 
didn't bother us any more. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 41 

Rainy nights made the work harder, for the 
boys had to crawl through the mud and slime 
until they were wet through and caked with 
mud and sometimes when we jumped into a shell 
hole for safety we would land in three or four 
feet of water. But the work paid, for 
the information we dug out of our prisoners, 
helped a lot in planning our attacks. 

When we were in the front line trenches 
our rations and "chuck" came up to us at 
10:00 P. M. and 2:00 A. M.— just four hours 
apart and that had to do us for the whole next 
day — so we always ate the "chow" at night and 
saved our rations for the daytime. You see, 
if the "chow detail," as we called the doughboys 
who brought our food up to us, came up in the 
daytime, sure as fate, Fritz would spot them 
and shells would come from all directions — 
Fritz would do anything to keep us from getting 
something to eat. 

For thirty-nine days we held that line under 
continuous shell-fire — and kept the Germans from 
getting into Paris. This wasn't what the Yanks 
came over for tho* — they wanted action and 
they soon got it. Holding the line wasn't suf- 
ficient, however, for it soon became imperative 
to push the enemy back in order to capture his 
strong positions and observation posts. 

Then we sure had our first real battle and 
our Second Division did itself proud for here's 
what we had opposing us — what we'd been 
holding that line against: The 87th German 
Division called the "Aluminum Division," most 
of the 197th, 237th, 10th, 28th, and 5th Ger- 
man Guard Divisions — so you see — we had some 



42 ADVENTURES OF AN 

battle. It was no wonder that the Huns thought, 
as a captured letter later expressed it, ''that 
the Americans were too fiery." 

Up to July 1, 1918, against the most pow- 
erful opposition that the German Army could 
exert, the Second Division had advanced its 
front an average distance of a little more than 
two kilometers (a kilometer is 5/8ths of a 
mile) and had taken more than eight hundred 
prisoners and ninety machine guns and auto- 
matic rifles. We must remember too, that this 
was at a time when Germany was loudly pro- 
claiming the overthrow and dissolution of the 
Allied armies. 

As a matter of fact, it was precisely at this 
time that the German leaders realized that the 
scale was swinging against them, slowly but 
surely, and it was the Battle of Chateau-Theirry 
that showed the first great test of the Yank 
and Boche. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 43 



CHAPTER IV. 
BATTLE OF VAUX 

This was my first real battle and really it 
meant more to me than any of the others, for 
it meant that my test had come. The little 
village of Vaux lay in the creek valley between 
Hill 204, taken by the Yanks and French on 
June 7th and 8th, and the positions north of 
Bois de la Morette taken by the 9th Infantry. 
It was a little innocent-looking place, but it 
didn't pay to be deceived by its looks, for the 
little stone houses of Vaux were fortresses, arm- 
ed with machine guns, its cellars were bomb 
proofs filled with large numbers of Germans and 
its streets were filled with hidden traps and 
ghastly surprises for the enemy. The Paris- 
Metz road which ran through the village cer- 
tainly laid bare the strategy that Fritz hoped 
to fool us with. He had dug "tank traps" in it 
— holes about twenty feet deep — covered with 
thin boards, just below the level of the road then 
filled up with dirt to the road level. It was 
practically impossible to detect them, but a 
tank, going down the road would break through 
and "au revoir." These traps were tricky, 
but our engineers discovered them before any 
appreciable amount of damage was done. 

The little village of Vaux thrust out a men- 
acing salient into the American line and the 



44 ADVENTURES OF AN 

Germans could sweep Monneaux and the com- 
munication lines of Hill 204 with their fire, 
so our 9th Infantry and the troops of the 3rd 
Division in liaison near Monneaux were or- 
dered to capture the town. The refugee inhabi- 
tants of the town described, for our benefit, 
the construction and location of the cellars and 
the intricacies of its streets. Here, too, is where 
our night patrol work counted, for we found 
maps of Vaux and the German trenches on 
some of our prisoners. Picture postals were 
carefully studied too, and a plan of attack de- 
cided on. 

Our attack was ordered for July 1st, and 
every platoon and squad leader, who was to 
be in it was given a map of the town with the 
particular cellar his squad was to capture, 
designated in red ink. Vaux had sixty-eight 
cellars and the Huns had made most of them 
shell-proof. 

About 5:30 that afternoon our artillery sub- 
jected the town to a terrific bombardment 
which soon reduced it to ruins. And, by the 
way, the French didn't like that a little bit — 
but goodness knows, with all the reconstruction 
work we were doing over there in the reclaimed 
area, they ought not to have been peeved about 
one, little, old, deserted village filled with Huns. 

At 6:00 P. M. we went "over the top" on a 
front of about two kilometers, our 9th Infantry 
fighting in conjuction with the 23rd Infantry 
on the left, and the troops of the 3rd Division 
acting in connection with 10th French Colonial 
troops. 



i 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 45 

The 9th Infantry was in the village within 
fifteen minutes and in twenty-five minutes — 
we had taken the village and advanced our line 
about a thousand yards. Some speed, wasn't 
it? 

While we were busy in the town, the 23rd 
Infantry took the Bois de la Roche, to the north- 
west of Vaux. 

The Yankees captured about sixty machine 
guns and five hundred prisoners and most of 
them were Poles from this same Aluminum Divi- 
sion, and I know for a fact that the Germans paid 
three for one in killed and captured. Our 
captain ordered us to use the captured machine 
guns, for Jerry was so keen on getting away 
that he left us lots of ammunition. 

We captured a German motorcycle too, a 
four wheeled contrivance, the oddest-look- 
ing thing I ever saw, for the frame was right 
in the center of the four wheels — couldn't have 
tipped over if it wanted to. And say, we cap- 
tured a Ford "flivver" too. I wonder if there's 
any place in the world where you couldn't cap- 
ture one. 

Well, we knocked the pep so completely out 
of the German regiment directly opposing us 
that it was withdrawn and another put in its 
place for a counter-attack, which came at day- 
break of the next day and was some fizzle. 

The troops that attacked Vaux were repulsed, 
their retreat cut off and a hundred and fifty of 
them taken prisoners. The Germans had seen 
their last of Vaux and incidently found out 
what it meant to fight the men from the U. S. A. 
— they'd had a taste of it that they wouldn't soon 
forget. 



46 ADVENTURES OF AN 

A bunch of our men distinguished them- 
selves in this battle. One Yank in our com- 
pany brought in two hundred prisoners. A Ger- 
man captain surrendered himself and told where 
there was a detachment of two hundred men 
that wished to give themselves up — so this 
Yank was sent out to get them, and get them he 
did, and rrtarched them in, in double file with 
their hands up in the air. They were really 
a tough looking bunch, and scared — say, their 
faces were as white as death. They said they 
hadn't had anything to eat for three days on 
account of our intense artillery fire, which had 
completely broken up their lines of communi- 
cation. 

We captured a German lieutenant, too, and 
when some of our men started to search him he 
objected strenuously — said he was an officer 
and refused to be searched. Imagine that line 
of talk taking with a doughboy. 

One of the searchers let loose with a swing 
that connected squarely with the "Lou's" jaw 
and he went down for the count, and when he 
came to, he had forgotten his line of argument and 
was as timid as a hare. I wonder if they never 
learn to use their fists in Deutschland. 

The Battle of Vaux was the one in which 
I won my Croix de Guerre. I brought in some 
"Fritzies" too, and because we were brigaded 
with the French I received the French Cross, 
sometime later, from the French General Petain. 

It was really funny — the way I happened 
to capture them. As I said before, Vaux was 
held by the Huns with about fifty machine guns 
— and each of our squads had a designated cellar 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 47 

to take. We made the attack and all went well 
until I lost my squad, or rather, my squad 
lost me. I was ready for Jerry tho,' for I had 
three hundred rounds of ammunition, twelve 
grenades, and one liquid fire grenade on me. 

Well, anyway, I went on, and threw a hand 
grenade into the first cellar I came to. After the 
smoke cleared away out came the "Fritzies" 
with their hands up — and they kept a-coming 
and a-coming until I thought I'd captured the 
whole German army. 

There were twenty altogether and I called 
out, gun leveled, you know — "Anyone in this 
bunch speak English?" and one fellow said, 
"Sure, Vm from Milwaukee" and I said, "Well, 
tell your friends to keep their hands up and 

march and do it d quick" — and they 

marched, believe me, and I took them to camp 
and that's all I did. 

And the funniest thing — the poor geeks were 
half starved. One of them had a loaf of the 
worst black bread I ever saw and he held on to 
it — hands up — until we got to camp. Thought 
we were beasts and starved our prisoners — 
wasn't he a fool? And that is how I won my 
Croix de Guerre. 

After getting rid of the Huns, I returned 
to our line, which was now established on a 
small hill just on the outskitrs of the town, 
where we prepared for the counter-attack I have 
already mentioned. When it did come, it was 
a complete failure for our machine gun fire 
was so heavy and so accurate that the advancing 
enemy troops were either mown down or their 



48 ADVENTURES OF AN 

retreat cut off so we took several hundred more 
prisoners. 

We held our line for nine days before we 
were relieved and we had some sport those nine 
days. I happened to be in a platoon that was 
detailed to go over to Hill 204 every night to 
help the French in case the enemy made an 
early morning attack. 

The first night, you know, to the amazement 
of the French we decided to go over and tease 
"Fritz" a bit — so we started to crawl toward 
their trenches on our hands and knees. Bing! 
All of a sudden a German machine gun 
opened up on us — hot and heavy, I'm telling you. 
and then "wowie," an Austrian 88 decided to 
help do us up. Say! If there's any shell a 
doughboy hates, it's this one, for tho' it's a 
small shell, its raises the dickens among the 
troops. 

So there we were, literally between the 
devil and the deep sea — ^machine gun fire and 
that blankety Austrian 88. One of the shells 
hit near me — so I lay flat for a minute, then 
made for the hole it had made — and I'm telling 
you, it doesn't make one only just big enough 
for a man to curl up in and that's all. Well, 
three of us had the same idea strike us at the 
same time, but I sprinted as I used to do in my 
good old baseball days and landed there first, 
and snailed myself snugly in while the other two 
doughboys lay flat on the ground just at the edge 
of the shell-hole. All of a sudden a shell 
hit right between them — killing both, and send- 
ing me a-kiting about fifteen feet from my bless- 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 49 

ed shell-hole. I gathered myself up and lit out 
for a large rock nearby — made it, by George, and 
considered myself lucky even tho' my arm was 
bleeding badly where a bit of shrapnel from 
the shell had hit me. 

Directly behind this rock was a badly-wound- 
ed doughboy with one of his legs terribly 
mangled from a shell explosion. We'd all been 
taught how to use our first aid kit for ourselves, 
but this poor chap was so shot up and bleeding 
to death so fast that he could hardly move. 
So I cut the string off the upper part of his 
legging, wound it tightly around the upper 
part of his leg, made a hitch in it and 
stopped the flow of blood. Gee! I felt sorry 
for him, but I hunted up the lieutenant and 
he ordered the boy taken back of the lines to a 
hospital where he eventually recovered. That 
was enough for one night. 

Our platoon dug holes in the side of Hill 204 
so we'd have a place to jump into in case of 
shell-fire, when we were over there at night — 
helping the French. 

One night when I came over, my hole wasn't 
there. In place of it there was one about fifteen 
times as large dug for me by a shell that had 
landed sometime during the day, directly in the 
one that I had dug. It was sure lucky for me 
that I was absent, or I'd have been with the 
angels or Ingersoll. 

This hill, too, was the limit for snipers. We 
didn't dare put our noses out for fear of them, 
and even then we lost quite a lot of our men 
that way. One night we fixed up a bunch of 



50 ADVENTURES OF AN 

dummies for the snipers to peg away at — we 
were tired of losing good men. We fixed Our 
dummies so that we could make them move by 
pulling a string from a distance back and we 
sure got 'Tritzie's" goat. They shot all day long 
at our bait and spared us. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 51 



CHAPTER V. 
A TRIP TO PARIS 

After holding the line nine days, our divi- 
sion had a notification from General Pershing 
that we were to be given a great surprise as 
soon as we were relieved. Well, of course, we 
were jubilant, for we were sure that meant 
about a ten-day pass to Paris for all of us. 
Talk about a disappointment! And we had held 
that blooming line for thirty-nine days, had been 
shelled all the time and had battled at Vaux, in the 
Bois de la Roche and on the Hill. 

Instead of passes, we were relieved and hiked 
back to a small village about fifteen miles behind 
the lines and there we were billeted for a week's 
rest while our Division was being recruited up 
to war strength, for we had lost so many men. 

That was hard luck, but we had to make the 
best of it — so we put in our time laying around, 
fixing up our clothes and playing blackjack. 
One night I won 2400 f ranees ($480.00) and 
then a most brilliant idea came into my head. 
I decided to go A. W. 0. L. (absent without 
leave) to Paris and stay as long as the money 
lasted. Another fellow decided to accompany 
me, but we got separated after we reached Paris. 
Say! That's the time I like to remember, and 
not the battles with their incessant cannonading 
and the wounded and the dead. 



52 ADVENTURES OF AN 

I make no excuses now for my Paris trip, 
except that thirty-nine days of fighting is a 
long time, and I was — Oh! so hungry for some 
fun. So when I struck Paris and found that 
champagne was only seven francs a bottle, I 
proceeded to make up for lost time. And the 
fool things I did, tho' it all seemed quite reason- 
able then! 

After drinking all I could, I left the cafe and 
started out for a walk. The first thing I saw 
was a shabby, blind, old begger. So I took 
him along with me until I found a clothing shop 
and there, with the aid of a clerk who could 
speak some English, we fitted him out in brand 
new clothes and turned him loose, and I don't 
know to this day how much I paid for them. 

Then, all of a sudden, I found six French 
girls with me — don't know where they came 
from — and they all seemed so happy. I bought 
them everything they wanted. We had a gay 
day until nine o'clock came. Every light in 
Paris was turned out, as usual, at that time for 
fear of an air raid, so my party broke up and 
the M. P.'s (military police) sent me back to 
the hotel. 

The next day, I started out again, still feeling 
good. While passing an apartment house, I 
heard music. I went in and on up the stairs 
until I found the apartment where the piano 
was and knocked boldly on the door. When the 
lady opened it, I made motions with my hands 
as if playing a piano. She nodded vigorously 
and took me into the parlor where her daughter 
was playing the piano. We had a musical time 
— full or empty, I'm always ready for music. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 53 

When I left I promised to take dinner with 
them the next evening. Early the next after- 
noon I happened to run across a public market 
and had another brilliant thought. I bought a 
basket and filled it full of fruits and vegetables 
and took it to the home of my new friends. 

They were perfectly delighted with it and 
we had a wonderful dinner. 

My money lasted just three days — it seemed 
to vanish like magic, and I couldn't remember 
where it went — even tho' I didn't spend it like 
another fellow I knew, did. He imbibed too 
much champagne for his good sense, bought a 
little Shetland pony and one of those little 
wicker carts from a man on the street and drove 
all over the city to see the sights. He was a 
sight hiniself tho' he didn't realize it. 
When he got tired of driving, he hunted up the 
man from whom he had bought the cart and 
sold it back to him for half price. 

My problem now was how to get back to 
my company. You see, not having a pass made 
it hard for me, and I didn't have any more 
money. Now on my way to Paris, I had seen 
a field hosptal at Meaux packing up prepara- 
tory to moving to some other scene of activty, 
so I went to the U. S. Headquarters in Paris 
— told them I belonged to this hospital and it 
had moved while I was out walking and that I 
had come down to Paris to find out where it 
was. They gave me the new location and 
money enough to go there, which, of course, I 
used to get back to my own company where 
I was bulletined for court-martial for ffoing- 
A. W. 0. L. 



54 ADVENTURES OF AN 

And General Pershing's great surprise came 
the day I got back, too. It was an order for 
our Division to proceed at once to the Soissons 
front where we had the hardest fighting that 
our division had to contend with during the 
war. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 55 



CHAPTER VI. 

BATTLE OF SOISSONS 

Our Division was taken by night on July 
16th in motor busses to a little village near 
the western side of the forest of Villers-Cot- 
terets. Here we stopped all day of the 17th to 
receive extra ammunition and supplies, and not 
until night came, did we get marching orders 
thru the forest. 

We had orders to attack the Huns on the 
eastern edge of the forest at 4:45 a. m. — on the 
morning of the 18th. 

Now that blooming forest was about seven 
miles wide, and intersected everywhere with 
paths and roads. It was heavy timber, too. 
Well, our officers didn't seem to know what 
roads we ought to take and we got scattered 
all thru that fool wood and mixed up beautifully 
with the transports, waiting there for the at- 
tack. The airplanes couldn't see them in the 
woods, you know. 

And it poured like blazes. The officers 
worked like mad, trying to find the different 
companies and battalions and guide them to 
their positions. Everything was in a terrible 
mix-up and in the rain and darkness — we had 
to put on all the speed we could, to get to 
our jumping-off place in time for the attack. 



56 ADVENTURES OF AN 

It seemed impossible that the Division could 
ever be ready by 4:35 a. m. But we stumbled 
on in the jet-black darkness, ran when we could, 
floundered thru the mud — any road we could 
find, leading in the right direction — and got 
there — ^just as morning broke and the artillery 
laid down a barage on the enemy's trenches. 
God! Such a night! 

The 5th Marines, 9th and 23rd Infantries 
went over behind the barrage and we hadn't 
had a minute to get our breath from our night's 
experience, but we still had ''pep" enough to 
shoot or bayonet or capture the first Germans 
that we ran into. They had no idea we were 
near them, and we must have seemed to them 
like ghosts coming out of the gray dawn. 

That day and the next are just a whirl of 
fighting in my remembrance — shooting, running, 
falling into shell holes — sending back captured 
Huns — and on again — while all around in the 
little ravines and on the plateaus — thousands of 
boys in khaki made their last sacrifice. 

My company came back with only forty 
men left and most of them were wounded. 

The first part of our drive was across rolling 
country — our first objective being some farm- 
houses. We hadn't had time before our ad- 
vance to have any hand or rifle grenades 
or machine guns given us, so we only had our 
rifles — but we reached our first objective fifteen 
minutes after going over. 

The Germans laid down a heavy counter 
barrage, and our men fell on all sides. At 
6:00 a. m. the prisoners began to stream back 
to the rear and we continued on to our second 
objective, capturing quite a few field guns. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 57 

After the rolling country was passed, we 
entered another marshy wood and came up to 
the embankment of the Soissons-Paris railway. 
We had the 1st Moroccan Division on the left 
of us and the 38th French Division on the right. 
The Germans, holding the embankment, fought 
like fiends, and every advantageous spot had a 
machine gun on it. The struggle here was ter- 
rible, and yet by 9:30 a. m., five hours after 
the "kick-off," we had advanced nearly five 
miles, captured the embankment and occupied 
the plateau overlooking Vierzy beyond. Nearly 
all our officers were killed, or wounded, but 
we kept on going. 

We took part of the village of Vierzy and 
a large bunch of prisoners and surrounded the 
rest of the town. The German army showed the 
most stubborn resistance. 

Our support waves and mopping up troops 
which came up behind us had hard work dig- 
ging them out of the town, and the dugouts in 
the ravines surrounding it. 

We lost so many men here that troops from 
the rear were sent up to fill the gaps. We 
were beaten down like a field of wheat in a 
terrific thunder shower. 

Just east of Vierzy we ran into an avalanche 
of shells the enemy were sending over, and it 
tore our lines all to pieces. The noise of the 
cannonading is indescribable. 

The boys proved themselves heroes in every 
way and many did some wonderful feats. It 
seemed just like part of the day's work to us 
then. We forgot the lack of food or water, 
forgot the rain and mud, and death itself seemed 



58 ADVENTURES OF AN 

just like a release from the terrible carnage. 
Men, badly wounded, kept on going, oblivious 
to their condition, until they dropped down. 
Even then some tried to crawl on, striving to 
help. It was the Great Reaper, who reaped 
in the fields of France that day. 

We had had no food and very little water, 
but at 6:30 that evening, the lines of the 2nd 
Division were closed up, and we continued our 
advance. By 8:00 o'clock, in the face of in- 
tense artillery and machine gun fire, we had 
gone ahead more than a mile on the plateau, 
and Vierzy had been captured. The few of us 
that were left were ordered to dig in for the 
night, for we had gained nearly six miles, 
and our whole line of advance was covered 
with wounded which had to be taken care of. 

In the morning the 2nd Engineers (now 
there was a dandy bunch of men; they dug all 
night and fought all day) advanced through 
what was left of our two Infantry regiments 
and the Marines, and gained more than a mile 
and a half. We came up then, dug in and held 
all our gains. If we could have gone a half 
mile farther, we would have reached the Sois- 
sons-Chateau-Thierry highway. 

However, to go farther was impossible. We 
had lost nearly half of our men and had had 
no cooked food for two days and a night. So 
we were relieved on the night of the 19th by 
a French Division and rested in the forest until 
the next day's noon. We were so exhausted 
that we fell asleep just where we were when the 
rest order came. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 59 

At noon, on the 20th, we marched back to 
St. Etienne — rested another day — then marched 
to a village farther back for a rest period and to 
be recruited up to war strength again, in order 
to be ready for the Champagne offensive. 

After the battle of Soissons, our other cam- 
paigns, those of Champagne and Verdun, seemed 
like child's play. As soon as we had finished 
them our Division was ordered to Toul, where 
we trained until we were ordered to take part 
in the St. Mihiel offensive. 



60 ADVENTURES OF AN 



CHAPTER VIL 

BATTLE OF ST. MIHIEL 

After our terrible loss in the Soissons and pre- 
ceding battles what was left of us was sent to a 
small village near Toul to recruit the Division up 
to war strength and train again. A number of men 
from Texas were sent in to fill up, and how we 
did enjoy listening to their Southern accent — 
laughed at it, too — but say, they were as fine 
a bunch of soldiers as anyone ever saw, and they 
knew the art of soldiering from A to Z. 

And talk about training, why, our officers 
trained us as if we'd never been trained before. 
We made every formation possible and studied 
all different tactics for attacking the enemy. 
This last is the most essential thing in modern 
warfare. We marched over the hills near Toul 
till we were tough as leather and formations 
were second nature to us. They taught us how 
to use the Sho-Sho-Rifle, too — a French gun — 
made somewhat on the order of a machine gun. 
It required three men to operate it, and shot 
eighteen shots in succession, but it was very 
effective. Before our orders came to leave for 
a different sector, we staged an attack. It 
worked perfectly, especially the signal corp 
work with the aeroplanes while we were ad- 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 61 

vancing. The Texas troops were especially fine 
in their new work and we were well prepared to 
meet the German in any sort of an attack or 
maneuver that the Germans wished. These 
Texas boys had strength and brains and won- 
derful vitality, and "Fritz" would have been 
worried if he could have seen them. Our fight- 
ing power was increasing daily, while that of 
the Germans was decreasing — so "Fritz" was 
billed for defeat and I rather think the German 
people, themselves, were beginning to worry, 
though the government suppressed all discourag- 
ing war news. 

Then orders came for our Division to 
move up to the St. Mihiel Sector. We marched 
there — a hike I shall never forget. It rained 
something terrible the whole time and the troops 
were soaked through and through. We had no 
dry clothes for a change, and we could not build 
fires during our rest periods, for the smoke 
would have given our positions away and 
"Fritz" would have commenced his favorite 
pastime — that of shelling the woods where our 
troops were stationed. So we let our clothes 
dry on our backs rather than have "Fritz's" 
pellets to take with our meals. 

And if youVe never seen French mud, you've 
never seen real mud. Get a layer started on 
your feet, and it just keeps "taking unto itself 
more mud" until one has a width and thickness 
of five or six inches of it. It takes strength to 
lift shoes coated like that, on a long hike, with 
the rain pouring down — but we certainly agreed 
with one doughboy poet who wrote: 



62 ADVENTURES OF AN 

''We have heard of Texas gumbo, 

And the mud in the Philippines, 
Where, if ive had legs like Jumbo, 

The mud would cover our jeans, 
But never did we get a chance 

To feel real mud till we hit France. 

''Our shoes are deep in it, 

We often sleep in it, 
We almost weep in it — 

It's everywhere; 
We have to fight in it, 

And vent our spite in it. 
We look a sight in it, 

But we don't care." 

We were boys — a long ways from home — 
and we wanted to "beat up" the Germans as 
soon as possible and get back home, and we 
intended to do it, mud or no mud, rain or no 
rain. From somewhere, I never could quite figure 
it out, our troops seemed to get a supply of 
inward strength and purpose that carried us 
through a lot of hardships. 

When we reached our position in the woods, 
we pitched our "pup tents" and crawled into 
them, wet as could be, and slept better than we 
ever had on a feather-bed at home, the sleep 
of healthy exhaustion. 

Next day our outfits were completed and 
by night we were ready for the big drive, and 
as soon as it was dark we started out for the 
old trenches on the Alsace-Lorraine front. Talk 
about rain ! It came down in torrents that night. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 63 

We thought we were soaked the night before 
— but we must have been dreaming. It wasn't 
a patching to this soaking. The old communica- 
tion trenches that we went through were some- 
thing awful — the mud was from six inches to 
a foot deep. Sometimes I wonder if things 
don't always seem worse out in the pitch-black 
darkness. 

We reached the front line trenches about 
midnight, ready for our attack at dawn. 

At one o'clock a. m., September 12th, it was, 
our artillery opened up on ''Fritz" and his 
gang, the most terrific shell-fire the world had 
ever known. All the thunder storms that ever 
happened on this old globe put together wouldn't 
begin to measure up to the noise that the great 
American artillery made that morning. That front 
billed as a quiet sector, too. We couldn't hear 
ourselves think on our side, and no living thing 
could last long on the other. The bombardment 
lasted about four hours and it is claimed that 
more shells were fired in this battle than in 
any previous one that the Allied Powers were 
in. It sounded to me like the end of the world. 
One of the boys cupped his hands and yelled 
full strength into my ear: "Say, boy, some 
Fourth of July we're having!" His voice 
sounded like a whisper to me. What he said 
was the truth, believe me. 

At dawn, the barrage lifted, and we went 
"over the top." We could breathe better in the 
stillness and were eager to be off. "Fritz" 
had worked for four years laying his acres of 
barbed wire entanglements, but our artillery 



64 ADVENTURES OF AN 

tore them all to pieces. The mass of wire 
bothered us a little though, for it tore through 
our leggings and cut our legs. After we had 
gone a short ways, at least a third of the boys 
had no leggings left. In front of us were some 
deep woods, but we figured that if we could get 
through those safely, out into the open stretch 
of field beyond, we'd have plain sailing for a 
while. But after all, we had very little trouble 
taking the woods. Once in a while a machine 
gun — stationed on a platform up in a tree, 
would take its toll and hold us up — but not for 
very long. We advanced so fast through the 
woods that the Germans were completely be- 
wildered. Very few of them stayed to welcome 
us, and those that did had their hands high in 
the air and had complexions like ghosts. Simply 
scared to death, they were. After going through 
the woods we made a sharp turn to the right 
and came out into a large open field. Intense 
machine gun fire held us up for about half 
an hour, but some of our men performed their 
already famous flanking stunt and put the guns 
out of commission. We skirmished across the 
field and then met the Germans coming toward 
us in all directions. Were we frightened? I 
guess not. They all had their hands in the air. 
That bombardment had taken all the pep out 
of them. 

Our troops had no time to bother with them 
— ^just motioned to them to keep on going to- 
ward the road — for the troops behind us would 
take care of them. 

Then again, we went through another bunch 
of woods which the Germans held as long as 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 65 

they could. It wasn't much of a battle. We 
captured about a thousand Germans there, in- 
cluding a full German band. When we got out 
of these woods, we could see the Germans on 
the opposite hill retreating as fast as possible 
— even the artillery had left their positions. 

So we rested a bit — opened our "canned 
Willie" and devoured it with relish. It was 
rotten stuff, but it tasted good then. 

Some distance away, I saw a team standing 
in the road and decided to do some investiga- 
tion of my own. Well, it was full of some 
farmer's household goods that he had been try- 
ing to save, but one of the horses had been 
killed by a rifle bullet; that was as far as he 
could go. At any rate, the driver had disap- 
peared — probably some German — so we ran- 
sacked the wagon. It was full of rare old 
brandy, razors, etc. We used the brandy to 
wash down the "canned Willie," and away we 
went. Say, we had a lot of "pep." Down we 
went into a sort of canyon or naturally pro- 
tected valley and discovered that it had been 
the German oflficers' quarters. That was a place 
to rest in — and we certainly availed ourselves of 
the opportunity. We prowled around a while 
and collected souvenirs and then made our 
greatest discovery — a real kitchen hanging full 
of quarters of real beef. How our mouths did 
water. I started the range going and we had 
a meal fit for a king. The Germans had left 
in such a hurry that they weren't able to take 
anj^hing with them. That made it fine for us. 
For after we'd discovered the kitchen, we dis- 
covered a canteen, and believe me or not, a 



m ADVENTURES OF AN 

keg of beer on tap. Now, of course, we had 
been given orders not to touch or taste anything 
that the Germans left in their retreat — but we 
had almost reached our objective, which was 
Jaulny, and nothing had happened to me yet, 
so I decided to try the beer — orders or no orders. 
I picked out the biggest stein hanging on 
the wall, filled it up at the tap and said to the 
boys: "Here goes, poison or no poison," and 
down my throat the German brew trickled. 

The boys stared at me, waiting to see me 
''kick off," but I felt fine, so tried another stein- 
full. Thought I'd die then, but no such luck. 
Well, when I didn't croak, the boys made a dive 
for the rest of the steins on the wall and made 
quick work of that keg. 

We had about three more kilometers to go 
before we reached Jaulny, which was our objec- 
tive. Part of the 9th Infantry was detailed to 
go with the 23rd Infantry to capture the town 
of Thiacourt, whch was the German supply 
base of the Alsace-Lorraine sector. 

The 9th Infantry took the town of Jaulny in 
a very short time. After the Germans had been 
driven out, the women, who had been in the 
town during the four years of German occupa- 
tion, came out from the cellars with outstretched 
arms to greet us. They hugged and kissed us 
and told us through French interpreters how 
terribly they had suffered under German tyr- 
anny and how all the men had been forced to 
fight for Germany. They were all ordered by 
our officers to stay in one large cellar for pro- 
tection during shell-fire. The next evening they 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 67 

were taken to the rear. They were just like 
children — they were so happy they couldn't ex- 
press it. After four years of privation, their 
deliverance seemed too good to be true. 

There were a lot of old women in the town 
of Thiacourt, too, when that was taken. They 
could not seem to realize that they were free. 

The capture of Thiacourt cut the Germans 
off from their base of supplies and it was a 
feather, too, in our caps. For we captured 
over a million dollars' worth of supplies. There 
was everything imaginable in that town that 
an army could use. The Germans had evacuated 
the town so hastily that they even left large 
guns mounted on flat cars in the railroad yard. 
After Thiacourt and Jaulny (our objectives) 
were taken, we began to give ourselves a "look- 
ing over.'' Our bunch of soldiers looked more 
like tramps than a Division of Uncle Sam's 
fighting forces. Our clothing was torn and 
caked with mud from head to foot and our guns 
were all rusty. My gun was never clean after 
that fight. Try as I would, I never could get 
the rust off, but even an old, rusty gun comes 
in handy sometimes. Our rusty guns not only 
defeated "Fritz," but they sure made us work 
hard to get them ready for inspection, for gun 
inspection by the oflficers was very strict, and 
if our guns didn't suit, we not only had to do 
extra detail work, but got a good "bawling 
out" by the officer, and who in the devil wants 
to be "bawled out" in front of his soldier pals 
for having a dirty gun? Not I. 

Our biggest problem, after we had rested 
awhile, was how to change our wet clothes, and 



68 ADVENTURES OF AN 

what to do with ourselves while they were 
drying out. We managed it beautifully, how- 
ever, for we found a German quartermaster's 
department and arrayed ourselves in new Ger- 
man uniforms and boots while our uniforms 
dried out. We were in Jaulny for three days 
when we were ordered back for a rest. Needed 
it, too, we did. The French officers said that 
we could not possibly take our objectives in less 
than three days, but it only took us nine hours 
to do the job. The divisions in this drive that 
helped to make history were the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 
26th, 37th and 42nd. Their remarkable achieve- 
ments will never be duplicated. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 69 



CHAPTER Vni. 
HOSPITAL LIFE 

After this battle I went to the hospital, but 
before telling the how and why of this — I want 
to tell something about the men, wounded on a 
battlefield. 

When troops go into battle they are usually 
so keyed up that a wound comes as a climax and 
relieves the tension. I have seen men, instantly 
killed by a bullet, retain exactly the crouching, 
sitting, or kneeling position they had when hit. 
Their muscles and nerves were so tense at the 
time that even death did not relieve the strain. 
The bodies would fall over at a touch — still 
retaining the same position. 

In most cases, when a man is wounded, he 
does not feel acute pain for some time after. 
He has usually, nothing to say when he is on 
the stretcher going to the dressing station — for 
the nerve centers, deadened by the wound have 
not yet recovered sensitiveness. But by the time 
the wounded men have reached the evacuation or 
base hospitals, the nerves are normal again, and 
the pain begins. It is amazing tho', to the unin- 
itiated, to see men horribly wounded not even 
moaning — and wounds at the front were hor- 
rible, for a fragment of shell always carries 
away what it hits. Some of the men appeared 
rather interested in their wounds, some paid no 



70 ADVENTURES OF AN 

attention to them, while others were horrified 
and wanted to die. I remember one fellow who 
attempted to shoot himself, but the piece of 
shell that crippled him had broken his revolver, 
too. Boys with shattered legs begged their com- 
rades to shoot them. I shall always remember 
how they pleaded. We passed one such in an 
advance one morning and retired that night by 
a different route. When we went by the same 
place the next morning we found this same 
soldier dead with a bullet in his head; but we 
never knew whether he did it himself or whether 
some German patrol shot him in the night. I 
wonder, sometimes, if the choice of the decision 
should not be left to the wounded man — but of 
course that was impossible. 

There was little time on the battlefield for 
last messages and very few were given in the 
hospitals for our boys always felt as if they 
were going to get well. Last messages were 
either given or written before the advances in 
the gray morning hours. We had time then and 
usually some writing paper. 

Wounded men have little to say, though; in 
every battle we heard calls for help, both when 
we went into and when we returned from an 
attack — yet, the calls were few in comparison 
with the number wounded. 

In most cases, where a man was killed or 
wounded, his belongings, such as wrist watch, 
ring, and knife were collected if possible and 
mailed to his nearest relative. In some of the 
battles tho' — where we only thought of food and 
water, shells and sleep, peril — and victory — 
where we had only one dominant thought — to 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 71 

beat the Boche — we had no time to think that 
a mother might care for a dead son's watch 
and if we had, there was no paper for his com- 
rades to wrap it in nor any to mail it. It all 
had to be done officially and there was so little 
time. 

I was sent back to the hospital at Toul in 
October, 1918, sick with the famous ''flu.*' I 
was kept there two days, transferred to a 
hospital train and taken clear across France to 
the Beau Desert Hospital, a few miles from 
Bordeaux. There the "flu" developed into pneu- 
monia and then empyema (pus abscesses be- 
tween the lung and chest walls) and I lay there 
for five months between life and death. 

This hospital was built of cement and had 
very little heat in it and sometimes the cold 
was intense. It was hard to be sick and cold 
too — but we made the best of it, and say, we 
had the best bunch of nurses. They did every- 
thing in their power to make us well and 
happy — they always had a new joke for us 
to laugh at. Laughing helped like thunder; it 
was so easy to be blue in France every time you 
thought how wide the ocean was. 

One of our nurses was such a dear. Every 
morning when she reported for duty — she al- 
ways greeted us with a ''How are you, my dear 
children," and somehow, I always felt better 
— she was so like a mother to us. 

The overseas Red Cross Nurses underwent a 
great many hardships too. The field hospitals 
were near the front, and sometimes under fire. 
Many times I have seen German planes bombing 



72 ADVENTURES OF AN 

our field hospitals — without any excuse for 
the outrage, for large Red Crosses were painted 
on the roofs of the hospitals, plainly visible from 
an aeroplane. 

Sometimes, too, the nurses had to live on the 
same kind of grub that we did — ^just plain 
"canned Willie" and hardtack, but they never 
grumbled. They deserve a special niche in 
history. 

The Salvation Army, the Red Cross and the 
Knights of Columbus were so good to us at 
the front and in the hospital. While we were 
lying in bed, death staring us in the face, they 
did far more than we ever expected them to. 
They brought us practically everything we 
asked for. Uncle Sam's boys will always have 
a warm spot in their hearts for these institu- 
tions and no one who ever donated anything 
to these organizations need regret it. 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 73 



CHAPTER IX. 
HOME AGAIN 

After five months of terrible suffering at 
Beau Desert Hospital I had the choice of stay- 
ing there until well or coming home. I couldn^t 
see that there was any choice — home was dearer 
to me than heaven — so I took the chance. If I 
didn't last thru — at least I'd be buried in my 
own country. 

We were loaded onto a hospital ship — at 
least, the officers called it that. It was an old 
English boat called the "Henderson" and she 
was supposed to make the voyage in ten to 
twelve days. We went by the southern route, 
by the Azores, hoping to avoid the storms, but 
we ran into one after another — each worse than 
the last until I thought the ship would turn 
turtle. The drainage tube in the abscess in 
my side was so long that every roll of the ship 
drove it farther into my side and the nineteen 
days that it took to cross the ocean seemed like 
nineteen years. 

I was sent for eleven days to the Debarka- 
tion Hospital in New York. The people of New 
York gave us royal treatment, took us out for 
long automobile rides, to the theatres, etc., and 
did everything they could for us. They made 
France and its horrors seem far away. 



74 ADVENTURES OF AN 

On March 1st, 1919, I was sent to the Base 
Hospital at Camp Lewis, Washington. All along 
the route, the Red Cross Chapters of each town 
and city met us, and nearly killed us, giving 
us so much to eat, and so much to smoke. I 
never had any idea that there were so many 
kind women in the world. 

At Camp Lewis, I stayed in the empyema 
ward until my discharge on the 29th of June, 1919. 
In my estimation, the hospital at this camp 
had the finest staff of officers in the army. I 
had begun to think I would never get well — 
but my recovery under their care was fairly 
rapid and thanks to them, I am well today — 
perhaps, not as well as before my enlistment, 
but as a doughboy once said, "As long as we're 
alive, we should worry." 

Camp Lewis Hospital had a great many 
visitors then, who brought us flowers, candies, 
cakes, and everything. Some came out of curi- 
osity to hear the stories from overseas — but 
sick men don't like to talk — and some came to 
cheer us up. 

There was one woman who will remain in 
my memory forever. She rarely missed a day 
in coming to our ward, and she always came 
with a smile — one that seemed to say, "You're 
all going to get well." She nursed us all in her 
bappy, motherly way, and made us all well. 
She was Mrs. Hiram Tuttle of Tacoma, Wash- 
ington, and she was known as the Mother of 
Ward 81 at the Base Hospital. The boys of 
81 will never forget her. 

I was in France fifteen months — ten months 
on the firing line with the shock troops, and 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 75 

five months in the hospital. I spent nine months 
in the hospital. Altogether I was in the army two 
years and three months, and I'd willingly do it 
again, if our Country needed me. 



76 ADVENTURES OF AN 



CHAPTER X. 

RECORD OF 2nd DIVISION 

Next to having won the Croix de Guerre, I 
am proud of having belonged to the 2nd Divi- 
sion. In the records of the Intelligence Depart- 
ment of the German general staff, the Second 
Division was rated as the highest of the Ameri- 
can Divisions, but the men of our Division will 
tell you that that's a mistake, that the first 
Division was just as good. Our own records show 
that the 2nd Division captured about one-fourth 
of the entire number of prisoners captured by 
the American Expeditionary Forces; one-fourth 
of the total number of guns captured, and suf- 
fered about one-tenth of the total number of 
casualties. 

We served in the Verdun sector, the Chateau 
Thierry and the St. Mihiel Sectors, the Cham- 
pagne and the Meuse-Argonne offensives. 

Our Division captured 288 officers and 11,- 
026 men, 343 guns and 1356 machine guns. 

Our total advance was about forty miles, 
against thirty-nine different German divisions, 
and our casualties were 24,429 men. 

Then too, we are proud, because our Divi- 
sion has been decorated more than any other. 
Our historian has a whole sheaf of citations 
and congratulatory telegrams from President, 
Kings, Field Marshals and Generals . 



AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 77 

The Division is composed of the 9th and 
23rd Infantries, the 5th and 6th Marines, the 
2nd Engineers and the 12th, 15th, and 17th 
Artillery Regiments. 

No school history will be complete that does 
not record the splendid achievements of the 2nd 
Division. 

The End 



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